will sell, and therefore most
selfishly refuse to buy it. One bookseller, indeed, offered to treat for
it if I would leave out all about the Hottentots and Caffres, the Greek
philosophers and Egyptian priests, and confining myself solely to polite
society, entitle the work 'Anecdotes of the Courts of Europe, Ancient
and Modern.'"

"The--wretch!" groaned Uncle Jack.

"Another thought it might be cut up into little essays, leaving out
the quotations, entitled 'Men and Manners.' A third was kind enough to
observe that though this kind of work was quite unsalable, yet, as I
appeared to have some historical information, he should be happy to
undertake an historical romance from my graphic pen,'--that was the
phrase, was it not, Jack?"

Jack was too full to speak.

"Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three
volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor
less. One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very
respectable and indeed enterprising person. And after going through a
list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise,
he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I
would guarantee half the very visible expenses. I was just meditating
the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized
with a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of
expectation."

"And that idea?" said I, despondently.

"That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and
shortly this. From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the
publishers. Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked in
the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote the
play, poor fellow!"

"Otway," said my father. "The story is not true,--no matter."

"Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten
pounds,--ten pounds, Sir! In short, instances of a like nature are too
numerous to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they
roll in seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little
children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has gone
forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst their
fetters. And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The Grand
Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which, Pisistratus, by
which, mark you, every author is to be his own publisher; that is, every
author